


this love that's a permanent mark

by secretsarenotforfree



Category: One Tree Hill
Genre: Canon Compliant?, F/M, Kinda, Poptarts, Softness, anyways i love them what else is new, made this up, mentions of - Freeform, takes place in season three after three sixteen, the other core five
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:00:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25455079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/secretsarenotforfree/pseuds/secretsarenotforfree
Summary: The issue was, you couldn’t. There was no way, man made or otherwise, that you could wrap up the feeling and the texture and the smell of being able to crumple the fabric of Nathan Scott’s t-shirt from where it lay on your body to your face and breath in deeply.
Relationships: Haley James Scott/Nathan Scott
Comments: 3
Kudos: 11





	this love that's a permanent mark

**Author's Note:**

> this started small and then grew distressing large. i'm posting from deep within one tree hill adoration, so be warned!!! from season three, after three seventeen and they've moved back into the apartment. :))
> 
> title from 'this love' by taylor swift.

If she could bottle this up and sell it, Haley would never need to worry about paying for college. One whiff, and it would market itself.

It’s four AM in the morning and she has no business being up at this hour. Technically, she guesses she does, because after Brooke’s so generous gift and a marital history wound into every fiber on the crappy living (area, she could never call it a room) carpet, Haley should be allowed to do whatever she wanted in her place. It was more likely that there would be rules for, rather than against, her skimming her hand along their hallway, groggy and tugged only by force of will, feeling around for the lamp cord on their countertop. It dangles, a bit too long, against her wrist when she finally gets ahold of it, pulling for that latch it has to get past for the light to go on. A low wash of illumination adds to the fridge glow, and technically she didn’t need the light but she didn’t want to have to eat _in_ the fridge. Haley was still young in many ways, but damn she was too old to do that.

Nothing on their meager shelves seems to suit the slight growl in her stomach (mental note, in the morning write _Get Groceries_ on their dollar store magnetic chalkboard), and it is to the cabinets that Haley heads. A box of strawberry Poptarts, near empty but for one lonely pastry without its partner, falls prey to her hands. 

It is in waiting for the toaster oven to work its magic that brought Haley to her lazily thought up her business plan. One easy to conjure if you could actually gather everything up and package it away to the masses. A little bit of Nathan Scott for those who would be, if Haley had anything to say about it, doomed to live without it (and what a sad existence they would live.) 

The issue was, you couldn’t. There was no way, man made or otherwise, that you could wrap up the feeling and the texture and the smell of being able to crumple the fabric of Nathan Scott’s t-shirt from where it lay on your body to your face and breath in deeply.

The first time Haley had worn something on his, with no barrier from her skin to the fabric (Nathan’s letterman jacket, in those early days, hadn’t counted), it was one of his sweatshirts. Thin and a smidgen linty, with one string lost to no return in the hood and sleeves that drowned her hands unless she rolled them up. The black sweatshirt had helped her feel brave, bolstering the euphoria from just getting married and translating into the bravery of telling her best friend about it. It was the first time Haley had truly gotten the chance to fully take in his scent, concentrated as it was, but it wouldn’t be the last.

Now, Haley could bring it to mind faster than she could her middle name. 

Now, she thinks that if she had to pen a tune to it, if for some reason a record company would pay her to capture the essence of Nathan Scott into assorted scales of different registers, Haley thinks that she could do it. (In that crazy situation, she of course wouldn’t - _she could afford to be selfish with him, especially against the industry that had, with her own ambition, almost torn them apart_ \- but. The fact remained that she still could.)

It didn’t matter if it was an old _Bobcats_ t-shirt that he’d owned since freshman year, a Ravens jersey that had gone through the wash so many times it would permanently stretched out a bit from where Nathan had grown into the shoulders, or a leather bomber jacket that he’d twirl around her shoulders when she got cold and forgot to bring a sweater. They all smelled, deeply and fully, like him.

It's his deodorant, the same brand he’d used since the first time he’d needed it and Deb bought it for him. The clean scent of air in the early mornings, when Nate went for a run and tried to leave his troubles in every pound of his foot. A slight hint of basketball leather from the sport that ran in his blood. He smells of the aura of power, of strength, a tiny whiff of that soft, vulnerable core that Haley knows lies closer to the surface than Nathan would ever admit, and a thrumming, constant musk that’s all his own.

Haley loves it.

She wants to wrap herself in it and never let go.

(Wearing her husband’s clothing was just the gift that never stopped giving.)

There is a ding, and her half lidded eyes work to make sure she doesn’t burn her fingertips on the pastry. Haley’s about halfway through when a sudden warmth envelops her. It’s part and parcel with that _smell_ , heated and sleep thick and in its truest, most consolidated form, and she doesn’t have to think to lean into it. Doesn’t have to concentrate when Nathan’s arms wind around her middle and hold her up, her long wash of blonde hair between them. His basketball shorts do nothing to affect the sculpted strength of his thighs behind her, stalwart and exposed to her bare legs. 

Haley’s brown eyes fully close them, a tiny hum tripping through her throat at the silky ghost of a touch of his eyelashes against her cheek when Nate presses a lazy kiss behind her ear. “Trouble sleeping?” 

She shakes her head, blonde and a hint of gold swishing against his bare chest. “No, mmm-mmm.” Her voice is molasses thick and raw, as Haley hadn’t planned on using it, murmured through a mouthful of frosting.

What Nathan doesn’t ask is about the nightmares, that one question threatening to bring the overwhelming tragedy of their reality barrelling through her sleep-and-eat comfortable mind space. There is still, and always will be, a gaping hole in their lives where Keith might’ve been, and each hobbling step of Peyton’s crutches served as one of the few physical reminders of what that day stole from each of them. Everyone was dealing with it in different ways. Brooke threw herself in student councilling the hell out of their senior class, fighting with guilt at being one of the few not trapped and trying desperately to be everything for everybody. At his request, both Haley and Brooke had been doing their best to give distance to a near twitchy, jaded Luke, somehow numbed with his hackles constantly raised as if waiting for the next tragedy to fall. More than once Haley had awoken to Nathan near crushing hold on her, the after affects of his nightmare shuddering through his corded muscles while he whispered words into her ear about how he couldn’t stand to see her in danger like that again. 

She, for her part, didn’t have any. Instead, Haley dreamed of memories, where Keith taught her how to change a tire if she ever had to do it alone, and the full bodied, dimpled laugh he gave at her jokes, so cheesy they were almost cheddar, the way that he liked them. That, however, was when Haley did get sleep - it happened less now, but for a while, it had been all she could do to get her eyes to close and not see haunting images of what they’d seen between the cops escort out of the center, the breaks in blue bodies showing two taped off pools of blood and the grief of Karen’s wail. Haley fisted her hand in the middle of Nate’s chest, in that vulnerable point that was all, she knew from the human anatomy textbook she read from cover to cover the day she started watching _Grey’s Anatomy_ , and tried to pretend that she could protect him from whatever might come. Curled herself around him, her much smaller body wrapped around his larger one, and held on for dear life.

Tonight though, right now, Haley is sleepy. And full of strawberry poptart, and wrapped in her husband’s scent. 

“Is that a Poptart?” 

It’s way too late (early?) for the note of amusement in his tone to be as prominent as it is, and her nose wrinkles in response. “I was hungry.”

“Hmmm.” Nathan tightens his fingers on her hip. “Maybe I am now too.”

Haley scoffs and pushes away his cheek with about two ounces of effort, but he clicks the light off. He leads her confidently down their one, darkened hall, and protests when Haley tugs from his grip to brush her teeth one more time. She looks over, a squint of a brown eye at Nathan’s raven dark hair and broad chest, waiting for her to snuggle into, and smiles privately with a toothbrush still stuck in her mouth.

The smell of Nathan Scott on a shirt was one thing.

But the smell of Nathan Scott in real life? Emanating from velvet skin that vibrated with his declarations of love? Nothing could ever hold a candle.


End file.
